It’s time to start making a change

Some of the participants at the workshops in Pat Cullinan Centre with the display of inspirational women who helped shape the world

North Lanarkshire Council’s Community Learning and Development team in Motherwell organised two events to celebrate International Women’s Day.

IWD takes place annually to celebrate and draw attention to women’s issues across the world, with The UN theme for this year being ‘Equality for Women is Progress for All’.

The first event was a health walk in Strathclyde Park, at which users of the service presented a project on inspirational women they carried out.

Three workshops also took place at the Pat Cullinan Centre in North Motherwell at which over 40 women explored ‘Living in the past, present and future’.

The ladies got going with a fitstep energiser and then watched a film some of them had made about parenting called ‘Hijacked Dreams’.

They then split into groups to take part in each of the three workshops as they learned from the past and how the role of women can further be strengthened in the future.

CL&D worker Mareth Young said: “We have women aged 17 to 70 who take part in our classes coming from a range backgrounds, but most on low incomes who are looking to improve their self confidence and opportunities in life.

“IWD has been running for over 100 years now and unfortunately even in 2014 a day to promote and celebrate women’s issues is still very much needed.

“For instance pay is still not equal in many places, so we still need to inspire change and take things forward.

“Of course it is all very well to say that things need to change, but the idea of the workshops was to come up with ideas of practical solutions to change things for the better.”